“Only the somewhat unpleasant one that your dead body might be less easy to identify.”
“But if they wanted me to be a dead body, why didn’t they kill me straightaway?”
“That’s a very interesting question, Victoria. It’s the question I want answered most of all.”
“And you haven’t any idea?”
“I haven’t got a clue,” said Mr. Dakin with a faint smile.
“Talking of clues,” said Victoria, “do you remember my saying that there was something about Sir Rupert Crofton Lee that didn’t seem right, that morning at the Tio?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t know him personally, did you?”
“I hadn’t met him before, no.”
“I thought not. Because, you see, he wasn’t Sir Rupert Crofton Lee.”
And she plunged once more into animated narrative, starting with the incipient boil on the back of Sir Rupert’s neck.
“So that was how it was done,” said Dakin. “I didn’t see how Carmichael could have been sufficiently off his guard to be killed that night. He got safely to Crofton Lee—and Crofton Lee stabbed him, but he managed to get away and burst into your room before he collapsed. And he hung onto the scarf—literally like grim death.”
“Do you think it was because I was coming to tell you this that they kidnapped me? But nobody knew except Edward.”
“I think they felt they had to get you out of the picture quickly. You were tumbling to too much that was going on at the Olive Branch.”
“Dr. Rathbone warned me,” said Victoria. “It was—more of a threat than a warning. I think he realized that I wasn’t what I pretended to be.”
“Rathbone,” said Dakin drily, “is no fool.”
“I’m glad I haven’t got to go back there,” said Victoria. “I pretended to be brave just now—but really I’m scared stiff. Only if I don’t go to the Olive Branch, how can I get hold of Edward?”
Dakin smiled.
“If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed. Write him a note now. Just say you’re at the Tio and ask him to get your clothes and luggage and bring them along there. I’m going to consult Dr. Rathbone this morning about one of his Club soirées. It will be easy for me to slip a note to his secretary—so there will be no danger of your enemy Catherine causing it to go astray. As for you, go back to the Tio and stay there—and, Victoria—”
“Yes?”
“If you’re in a jam—of any kind—do the best you can for yourself. As far as possible you’ll be watched over, but your adversaries are rather formidable, and unfortunately you know rather a lot. Once your luggage is in the Tio Hotel your obligations to me are over. Understand that.”
“I’ll go straight back to the Tio now,” said Victoria. “At least I shall just buy some face powder and lipstick and vanishing cream on the way. After all—”
“After all,” said Mr. Dakin, “one cannot meet one’s young man completely unarmoured.”
“It didn’t matter so much with Richard Baker though I’d like him to know I can look quite nice if I try,” said Victoria. “But Edward.…”
Twenty-two
Her blonde hair carefully arranged, her nose powdered and her lips freshly painted, Victoria sat upon the balcony of the Tio, once more in the role of a modern Juliet, waiting for Romeo.
And in due course Romeo came. He appeared on the grass sward, looking this way and that.
“Edward,” said Victoria.
Edward looked up.
“Oh, there you are, Victoria!”
“Come up here.”
“Right.”
A moment later he came out upon the balcony which was deserted.
“It’s more peaceful up here,” said Victoria. “We’ll go down and let Marcus give us drinks presently.”
Edward was staring at her in perplexity.
“I say, Victoria, haven’t you done something to your hair?”
Victoria gave an exasperated sigh.
“If anybody mentions hair to me, I really think I shall bat them over the head.”
“I think I liked it better as it was,” said Edward.
“Tell Catherine so!”
“Catherine? What has she got to do with it?”
“Everything,” said Victoria. “You told me to chum up with her, and I did, and I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what it let me in for!”
“Where’ve you been all this time, Victoria? I’ve been getting quite worried.”
“Oh you have, have you? Where did you think I’d been?”
“Well, Catherine gave me your message. Said you’d told her to tell me that you’d gone off to Mosul suddenly. It was something very important and good news, and I’d hear from you in due course.”
“And you believed that?” said Victoria in an almost pitying voice.
“I thought you’d got on the track of something. Naturally, you couldn’t say much to Catherine—”
“It didn’t occur to you that Catherine was lying, and that I’d been knocked on the head.”
“What?” Edward stared.
“Drugged, chloroformed—starved….”
Edward cast a sharp glance around.
“Good Lord! I never dreamed—look here, I don’t like talking out here. All these windows. Can’t we go to your room?”
“All right. Did you bring my luggage?”
“Yes, I dumped it with the porter.”
“Because when one hasn’t had a change of clothes for a fortnight—”
“Victoria, what has been happening? I know—I’ve got the car here. Let’s go out to Devonshire. You’ve never been there, have you?”
“Devonshire?” Victoria stared in surprise.
“Oh, it’s just a name for a place not far out of Baghdad. It’s rather lovely this time of year. Come on. I haven’t had you to myself for years.”
“Not since Babylon. But what will Dr. Rathbone and the Olive Branch say?”
“Blast Dr. Rathbone. I’m fed up with the old ass anyway.”
They ran down the stairs and out to where Edward’s car was parked. Edward drove southwards through Baghdad, along a wide avenue. Then he turned off from there; they jolted and twisted through palm groves and over irrigation bridges. Finally, with a strange unexpectedness they came to a small wooded copse surrounded and pierced by irrigation streams. The trees of the copse, mostly almond and apricot, were just coming into blossom. It was an idyllic spot. Beyond the copse, at a little distance, was the Tigris.
They got out of the car and walked together through the blossoming trees.
“This is lovely,” said Victoria, sighing deeply. “It’s like being back in En gland in spring.”
The air was soft and warm. Presently they sat down on a fallen tree trunk with pink blossom hanging down over their heads.
“Now, darling,” said Edward. “Tell me what’s been happening to you. I’ve been so dreadfully miserable.”
“Have you?” she smiled dreamily.
Then she told him. Of the girl hairdresser. Of the smell of chloroform and her struggle. Of waking up drugged and sick. Of how she had escaped and of her fortuitous meeting with Richard Baker, and of how she had claimed to be Victoria Pauncefoot Jones on her way to the Excavations, and of how she had almost miraculously sustained the part of an archaeological student arriving from En gland.
At this point Edward shouted with laughter.
“You are marvellous, Victoria! The things you think of—and invent.”
“I know,” said Victoria. “My uncles. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones and before him—the Bishop.”
And at that she suddenly remembered what it was she had been going to ask Edward at Basrah when Mrs. Clayton had interrupted by calling them in for drinks.
“I meant to ask you before,” she said. “How did you know about the Bishop?”
She felt the hand that held hers stiffen suddenly. He said quickly, too quickly:
“Why, you told me, didn??
?t you?”
Victoria looked at him. It was odd, she thought afterwards, that that one silly childish slip should have accomplished what it did.
For he was taken completely by surprise. He had no story ready—his face was suddenly defenceless and unmasked.
And as she looked at him, everything shifted and settled itself into a pattern, exactly as a kaleidoscope does, and she saw the truth. Perhaps it was not really sudden. Perhaps in her subconscious mind that question: How did Edward know about the Bishop? had been teasing and worrying, and she had been slowly arriving at the one, the inevitable, answer…Edward had not learned about the Bishop of Llangow from her, and the only other person he could have learned it from, would have been Mr. or Mrs. Hamilton Clipp. But they could not possibly have seen Edward since her arrival in Baghdad, for Edward had been in Basrah then, so he must have learned it from them before he himself left England. He must have known all along, then, that Victoria was coming out with them—and the whole wonderful coincidence was not, after all, a coincidence. It was planned and intended.
And as she stared at Edward’s unmasked face, she knew, suddenly, what Carmichael had meant by Lucifer. She knew what he had seen that day as he looked along the passage to the Consulate garden. He had seen that young beautiful face that she was looking at now—for it was a beautiful face:
Lucifer, Son of the Morning, how art thou fallen?
Not Dr. Rathbone—Edward! Edward, playing a minor part, the part of the secretary, but controlling and planning and directing, using Rathbone as a figurehead—and Rathbone, warning her to go while she could….
As she looked at that beautiful evil face, all her silly adolescent calf love faded away, and she knew that what she felt for Edward had never been love. It had been the same feeling that she had experienced some hours earlier for Humphrey Bogart, and later for the Duke of Edinburgh. It had been glamour. And Edward had never loved her. He had exerted his charm and his glamour deliberately. He had picked her up that day, using his charm so easily, so naturally, that she had fallen for it without a struggle. She had been a sucker.
It was extraordinary how much could flash through your mind in just a few seconds. You didn’t have to think it out. It just came. Full and instant knowledge. Perhaps because really, underneath, you had known it all along….
And at the same time some instinct of self-preservation, quick as all Victoria’s mental processes were quick, kept her face in an expression of foolish unthinking wonder. For she knew, instinctively, that she was in great danger. There was only one thing that could save her, only one card she could play. She made haste to play it.
“You knew all along!” she said. “You knew I was coming out here. You must have arranged it. Oh Edward, you are wonderful!”
Her face, that plastic impressionable face, showed one emotion—an almost cloying adoration. And she saw the response—the faintly scornful smile, the relief. She could almost feel Edward saying to himself, “The little fool! She’ll swallow anything! I can do what I like with her.”
“But how did you arrange it?” she said. “You must be very powerful. You must be quite different from what you pretend to be. You’re—it’s like you said the other day—you’re a King of Babylon.”
She saw the pride that lit up his face. She saw the power and strength and beauty and cruelty that had been disguised behind a façade of a modest likeable young man.
“And I’m only a Christian Slave,” thought Victoria. She said quickly and anxiously, as a final artistic touch (and what its cost was to her pride no one will ever know), “But you do love me, don’t you?”
His scorn was hardly to be hidden now. This little fool—all these fools of women! So easy to make them think you loved them and that was all they cared about! They had no conception of greatness of construction, of a new world, they just whined for love! They were slaves and you used them as slaves to further your ends.
“Of course I love you,” he said.
“But what is it all about? Tell me, Edward? Make me understand.”
“It’s a new world, Victoria. A new world that will rise out of the muck and ashes of the old.”
“Tell me.”
He told her and in spite of herself she was almost carried away, carried into the dream. The old bad things must destroy each other. The fat old men grasping at their profits, impeding progress. The bigoted stupid Communists, trying to establish their Marxian heaven. There must be total war—total destruction. And then—the new Heaven and the new Earth. The small chosen band of higher beings, the scientists, the agricultural experts, the administrators—the young men like Edward—the young Siegfrieds of the New World. All young, all believing in their destiny as Supermen. When destruction had run its course, they would step in and take over.
It was madness—but it was constructive madness. It was the sort of thing that in a world, shattered and disintegrating, could happen.
“But think,” said Victoria, “of all the people who will be killed first.”
“You don’t understand,” said Edward. “That doesn’t matter.”
It doesn’t matter—that was Edward’s creed. And suddenly for no reason, a remembrance of that three thousand years old coarse pottery bowl mended with bitumen flashed across Victoria’s mind. Surely those were the things that mattered—the little everyday things, the family to be cooked for, the four walls that enclosed the home, the one or two cherished possessions. All the thousands of ordinary people on the earth, minding their own business, and tilling the earth, and making pots and bringing up families and laughing and crying, and getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. They were the people who mattered, not these Angels with wicked faces who wanted to make a new world and who didn’t care whom they hurt to do it.
And carefully, feeling her way, for here in Devonshire she knew that death might be very near, she said:
“You are wonderful, Edward. But what about me? What can I do?”
“You want to—help? You believe in it?”
But she was prudent. Not sudden conversion. That would be too much.
“I think I just believe in you!” she said. “Anything you tell me to do, Edward, I’ll do.”
“Good girl,” he said.
“Why did you arrange for me to come out here to begin with? There must have been some reason?”
“Of course there was. Do you remember I took a snap of you that day?”
“I remember,” said Victoria.
(You fool, how flattered you were, how you simpered! she thought to herself.)
“I’d been struck by your profile—by your resemblance to someone. I took that snap to make sure.”
“Whom do I resemble?”
“A woman who’s been causing us a good deal of trouble—Anna Scheele.”
“Anna Scheele.” Victoria stared at him in blank surprise. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. “You mean—she looks like me?”
“Quite remarkably so side view. The features in profile are almost exactly the same. And there’s one most extraordinary thing, you’ve got a tiny mark of a scar on your upper lip, left side—”
“I know. It’s where I fell on a tin horse when I was a child. It had a sharp ear sticking up and it cut quite deep in. It doesn’t show much—not with powder on.”
“Anna Scheele has a mark in just the same place. That was a most valuable point. You’re alike in height and build—she’s about four or five years older than you. The real difference is the hair, you’re a brunette and she’s a blonde. And your style of hairdressing is quite different. Your eyes are a darker blue, but that wouldn’t matter with tinted glasses.”
“And that’s why you wanted me to come to Baghdad? Because I looked like her.”
“Yes, I thought the resemblance might—come in useful.”
“So you arranged the whole thing…The Clipps—who are the Clipps?”
“They’re not important—they just do as they’re told.”
Something in Ed
ward’s tone sent a faint shiver down Victoria’s spine. It was as though he had said with inhuman detachment, “They are under Obedience.”
There was a religious flavour about this mad project. “Edward,” she thought, “is his own God. That’s what’s so frightening.”
Aloud she said:
“You told me that Anna Scheele was the boss, the Queen Bee, in your show?”
“I had to tell you something to put you off the scent. You had already learnt too much.”
“And if I hadn’t happened to look like Anna Scheele that would have been the end of me,” thought Victoria.
She said:
“Who is she really?”
“She’s confidential secretary to Otto Morganthal, the American and international banker. But that isn’t all she is. She has the most remarkable financial brain. We’ve reason to believe she’s traced out a lot of our financial operations. Three people have been dangerous to us—Rupert Crofton Lee, Carmichael—well they’re both wiped out. There remains Anna Scheele. She’s due in Baghdad in three days’ time. In the meantime, she’s disappeared.”
“Disappeared? Where?”
“In London. Vanished, apparently, off the face of the earth.”
“And does no one know where she is?”
“Dakin may know.”
But Dakin didn’t know. Victoria knew that, though Edward didn’t—so where was Anna Scheele?
She asked:
“You really haven’t the least idea?”
“We’ve an idea,” said Edward slowly.
“Well?”
“It’s vital that Anna Scheele should be here in Baghdad for the Conference. That, as you know, is in five days’ time.”
“As soon as that? I’d no idea.”
“We’ve got every entry into this country taped. She’s certainly not coming here under her own name. And she’s not coming in on a Government service plane. We’ve our means of checking that. So we’ve investigated all the private bookings. There’s a passage booked by BOAC in the name of Grete Harden. We’ve traced Grete Harden back and there’s no such person. It’s an assumed name. The address given is a phony one. It’s our idea that Grete Harden is Anna Scheele.”